Editor's Note: The Article That Broke Me
When Arthur first sent this article in, I took a look at it and gasped. After all was said and done, Arthur had written sixty-eight pages of complete primer from start to finish - twenty thousand words for me to edit. (For the record, a normal article runs about two to five thousand and I edit four to six articles daily, making this single article almost a day's work in itself.) It was good stuff, but considering the current Mirrodin load I was under I wanted to get this all up in one day.

This work features everything about my pet deck, Mud - its development; its former decklists; its tested cards; its results; its creators; how the metagame changed during Mud's first year of its lifetime; how Mud works; and a look at its future. Also, Mud is compared to WelderMud. A list of every card tested in Mud (or even thought of) is included. Everything is found right here in this article.

I wrote this to be the reference work for everything about Mud.

Mud and WelderMud were created by Koen van der Hulst and Arthur Tindemans - respectively known as Thug and Tindemans on The Mana Drain. With these decks, Koen and I reached, respectively, second and first place in the DCI Vintage Rating list of the Netherlands.

A lot of people added Goblin Welders to the standard Mud deck the over last few months; however, during the development of Mud one year ago we already heavily tested this. We also played a few tournaments with it starting in May... But more on WelderMud later.

In this work, I'll be mentioning specific decks by name. However, with some cards being good against specific decks or decktypes, I'll always be speaking of decktypes in general, often as well of specific decks. This is because I want to create a reference work about Mud, to be used now and in the future, when new decks evolve. This is also maybe for finding cards to play in or against low-budget versions of Mud or decks, or just to be played in lower-powered environments, with a completely different metagame.

There will also arise certain combinations between decktypes, like decks being able to be aggressive and controlling at the same time, as Mud can be itself. I'll mention combination decks as Mud, Stax and TnT. For further combinations to arise in the future you should probably find a balance between certain suggested sideboarding options, or of course add new sideboard cards you think will fit the metagame.

If you want to know more about a named deck, I suggest you take a look at http://www.themanadrain.com/primers.htm. Or just search for an article about a deck by putting the deck name into StarCityGames' article finder.

Mud's Development
It was somewhere in July 2002 when I went on my holidays. As on some other holidays or trips that year, I just took my old Inquest with the list containing all Magic cards, sorted by color. At that time, the Inquest still featured all the cards, except maybe for the few last expansions. (Well, at least my Inquest did, being one of the last.)

I went on the trip along with a friend to a camping site in Italy. First of all, I went by train, so I had plenty of time to do stuff. Second, I had lots of free time out there in Italy. So as always, I sought for quality decks to create, for powerful cards to abuse. I found that abusable card in Mishra's Workshop.

At that time I was playing Black/Green Nether Void, supporting Pernicious Deed. I had just won Castricum with it, which was the tournament of the Netherlands at that time. After creating Mud, I even won the second tournament in a row with my Void - once again in Castricum. This was recognized as the first big tournament ever won with B/G Void, as ten Germans came to join the tournament - and along with the regulars, it created a metagame consisting of ninety-two players, of which at least twenty were powered.

However, I felt it wasn't consistent enough. It felt like it really just could have went totally wrong... And sure enough, in the next Castricum I played I went 3-3 with it. During testing, Mud just won against this deck as well, just like against almost all of the black-based decks. This was because of Ensnaring Bridge. A Pernicious Deed or Powder Keg can take care of it, but usually they take care of most creature threats on the opponent's side as well.

So during these last two tournaments I just wanted to play Mud, but it wasn't finished yet. Not only the testing, but really especially the fact that neither Koen or I had the cards we needed yet. In my case, it wasn't even the power - just some other cards in the deck we both didn't have.

Now back to the development of the deck. At that time, it didn't have a name.

I didn't know of any Workshop-decks, even though TnT had arisen a few months earlier in Dülmen. If you look back in time, there are some reports of WelderRed in Extended somewhere around July 2002 - but we didn't know about that deck, either. We just thought it was about time to abuse Mishra's Workshop. The funny thing was we all thought of the same thing independently.

So we came home and figured it was time to do some Apprentice again. We both starting talking tough, like,"Dude, I'll kill you with my new artifact deck.""Dude, I'll kill you with my artifact deck!" so we were like,"Are you serious?"

So we went on and played and liked each other's ideas.

My decklist hadn't been perfectly tweaked, since I was on a camping trip. I just wrote down ideas.

4 Helm of Awakening
4 Winter Orb
4 Static Orb
4 Tangle Wire
4 Icy Manipulator
4 Ring of Gix
4 Relic Barrier
4 Howling Mine
3 Powder Keg
3 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Karn, Silver Golem
1 Black Lotus
1 Grim Monolith
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
4 Mishra's Workshop
4 Ancient Tomb
4 City of Traitors
4 Rishadan Port

Total: 67

As you can see, it really hadn't been tweaked at all. This is the way I usually get to work when making a new deck, when I have no idea how the whole idea will turn out. Add all the cards in large amounts, then play some games with no opponent, and see what numbers of cards should be changed.

Some Explanation
I tried to abuse some of the artifacts that were able to be switched off; Winter Orb, Static Orb, Howling Mine. With the following cards I tried to switch the two Orbs off in my turn, or the Howling Mine in opponents turn; Icy Manipulator, Ring of Gix and Relic Barrier. At the same time, the Icy Manipulator and the Ring of Gix could disrupt the opponent. The Powder Kegs were added for the same reason.

Along with the Ensnaring Bridges, the Powder Kegs can also really help you stay alive, by preventing creatures from attacking.

Along with the Winter Orbs, the Static Orbs, the Icy Manipulators, and the Rings of Gix, the Rishadan Ports would disrupt opponent's mana sources. Tangle Wire helped too, as being one of the best fast cards to silence an opponent for some time - and it also had perfect synergy with Winter Orbs and Static Orbs. That way your opponent was likely to be forced to tap pretty much everything for a few turns. Tangle Wire also works perfectly with the few artifacts in this deck that do the same thing, whether they were tapped or not. Also, you're likely to have more permanents than your opponent will anyway, since all the cards in the deck are permanents.

Helm of Awakening seemed like a good option since in this deck, the not reducing colored mana costs wasn't a drawback - and it really helped the explosiveness of the deck.

Karn, Silver Golem was a strong option as the kill card, by making all other non-creature artifacts creatures and attacking for a lot. The rest of the cards were strong abusable mana sources.

Now, Koen's decklist was the following:

4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Smokestack
4 Tangle Wire
4 Temporal Aperture
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Grafted Skullcap
2 Jester's Cap
1 Memory Jar
4 Goblin Welder
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Sol Ring
3 Mind Stone
3 Fire Diamond
4 Thran Dynamo
4 Mishra's Workshop
7 Mountain
1 Tolarian Academy

Total: 60

The goal of this deck was to get the lock down with Smokestack and Sphere of Resistance - the same lock later adopted by Mud and WelderMud. The Smokestack causes the opponent to sacrifice one or more permanents during your upkeep, while the Sphere of Resistance usually prevents them from playing more than one or two permanents during their turn. The deck is built to work around this lock.

Ensnaring Bridge and Grafted Skullcap form another nice combo, consisting of two cards perfectly playable on their own. Ensnaring Bridge allows you to stay alive while getting the lock down, while Grafted Skullcap is one of three cards in this deck that causes card advantage on their own. It doesn't matter that you have to discard your hand in general, since all you play are permanents, which you want to get out as quickly as possible. As long as you don't draw multiple lands, it should be possible to get all the cards you draw into play as well. And, as said, Grafted Skullcap provides a definite plus alongside of Ensnaring Bridge. With no possibility of keeping any cards in hand, your"cards in hand" count remains zero in opponents turn. This makes the Ensnaring Bridge work at its maximum.

The second card causing card advantage on its own is Temporal Aperture. This is an excellent inclusion in any artifact deck, as long as you can get the five mana needed for its ability fast. The Thran Dynamo, Mind Stone, and Fire Diamond all help with supplying mana - although they don't work until a turn later. The Fire Diamond, however, also provides red mana, along with the further useless mountains, for casting Goblin Welder.

The reason I say"further useless" is because the Fire Diamonds can be used for Goblin Welder's ability. The inclusion of Welder is simply because it's a excellent card, able to fetch back countered, destroyed, sacrificed, discarded, or even by-Goblin-Welder-removed artifacts.

Furthermore Goblin Welder provides the kill in this deck, removing all of the cards in opponent's deck, by using and welding back one or two Jester's Caps. This was the reason for including Jester's Cap in the deck.

Tangle Wire is added for the same reason described above; it's one of the best fast cards to silence your opponent for some time - and in this deck more than in the one listed above, it allows you to tap artifacts that continue to function whether they're tapped or not. Also, as I said before, you're likely to have more permanents

.

A third card good for direct card advantage is Memory Jar. This card is perfect once you have enough mana available to cast it and then play as many cards from your new, temporary hand as possible. It becomes sick with a usable Goblin Welder; give up one artifact each turn to draw seven cards?

The rest of the cards are, naturally, mana sources.

When you look through these decklists, and maybe read through the deck explanations, there are some cards that just belong in each of the two decks. It seemed like both decks weren't performing optimally... But when you go through all cards in the two decks and select the best, you end up with 90% of Mud. I'll first review the cards that didn't make the cut.

Helm of Awakening
This card is part of a funny contradiction in the two decks; I'm trying to abuse the Helm of Awakening, since in this deck it usually gives you the greatest advantage in the deck as compared to your opponent, while Koen played the Sphere of Resistance, where you'll usually take the least disadvantage from the card. However, Sphere of Resistance just rips apart the perfectly-tuned mana bases of so many decks. The artifact decks just wouldn't have that much trouble with it. So when we selected Sphere of Resistance, no possibility for the Helm of Awakening remained.

Static Orb
When Koen and I were trying to optimize the decks, and finally would end up with one deck, it seemed the whole idea of abusing the"switchable" artifacts just wasn't good enough... So we had to look at these artifacts individually.

Static Orb seems like it would force the opponent to choose in his upkeep what he wants to do in one turn... But there's no real reason why you wouldn't have the same problem, and testing revealed it disrupted you too much.

Icy Manipulator/ Ring of Gix
Individually, instead of being part of a locking combo, these cards can be strong - but some testing proved them to be not strong enough. There are better effects; Tangle Wire's can tap more permanents at once, and cards like Ensnaring Bridge can stop more creatures at once.

Relic Barrier
Individually, there really isn't much better about this card than an Icy Manipulator. Of course, it has a cheaper mana cost, but it's also far less usable in its ability.

Howling Mine
While it provides card advantage, Howling Mine gives it to your opponent as well. After testing with this card a lot, it seemed that it didn't help you much more than your opponent, and somewhat contradicted the idea of getting him in a lock as soon as possible.

Temporal Aperture
Like I said before, a great card once you can get the mana its ability costs quite a lot. The problem is that you won't always have that mana, and it takes some extra time to get a threat out of this. Even with Mishra's Workshop's mana base, it wasn't consistently possible.

Goblin Welder
Allows you to fetch or"weld" back countered, destroyed, sacrificed, discarded or even by by-Goblin-Welder-removed artifacts. It lets you remove and return cards like Smokestack, causing you to sacrifice minimal permanents yourself. Also, it can prevent Tangle Wire from fading away by welding the Wire away and back again before you're forced to sacrifice it.

However, at the time we created Mud, Goblin Welder wasn't worth playing with seven Mountains. I'll review this subject somewhat below.

Rishadan Port
This card is under tricks instead of mana sources, because this card was mainly included in my decklist for its second ability, not the mana ability. However, it's too much of a cost to just tap one land. It's simply far inferior to Strip Mine or Wasteland, which just destroy a land instead of a continual investment to tap one down. There's not enough room and use in the deck for this card to include it.

Jester's Cap
It would be fun to kill someone with Jester's Cap indeed, but somewhat slow. Obviously, it's not really meant to be a kill card... Although it provides an excellent sideboard card or even mainboard card, since it removes the kill in most combo or control decks. So it's still worth a spot, but usually not in the maindeck.

Ancient Tomb
I don't say it isn't possible to play this card, since it can be good... But it's a risk. In the final version of the deck it just didn't outweigh Mishra's Workshops, City of Traitors, Wastelands, Petrified Fields, and the two restricted lands. Thus, there was no room for this.

Mind Stone/Fire Diamond
Just not fast enough.

Mountain
Of course, the Mountains were only in the deck to be able to play Goblin Welders. Although it can be an advantage to play some basic lands instead of all non-basic lands, there's more to abuse in lands with nice abilities and as their 'disadvantage' they produce colorless mana.

As said under the Goblin Welder section, I'll review why Goblin Welder and thus Mountains wouldn't be played below.

Thran Dynamo
This card makes you choose between two separate builds. With this card, you'll be somewhat slower, but also able to reach bigger amounts of mana. That way you can play cards and their abilities, so the Dynamo is very usable for cards like Temporal Aperture or Mishra's Helix.

Mishra's Helix is somewhat better than Temporal Aperture, since it can lock down people immediately; with Temporal Aperture, you have to draw into the lock card first. However we chose not to give away any speed, after quite a bit of testing, so we play none of the three cards in actual Mud.

Mishra's Helix is reviewed under Tested cards, since it wasn't in any of the first two decklists.

From Two Decks To One, Mono-Brown, Mud
Now, Mud didn't really have a name at that time; it was simply called"our Artifact deck" or"the Artifact deck," or it was just referred to as Mono-brown control. It wasn't until December-January when we first started making up names, so it actually about five months after we created Mud.

Two names that just didn't have"it."
1 The Collection. This was my idea; I thought it fitted a deck with just artifacts, since they're collectible items. Also it played all the expensive collectable jewelry, and all other restricted mana artifacts.
2 The Artifact Menace, or The Artifact Menace Exposed. Short: AME, when spoken of as if 'aim', being 'the aim', the best deck, or whatever.

Koen really just wanted a short name, because people always tend to speak of deck names in short.

In the train coming back from a Castricum tournament, we figured it was about time to give our deck its own identity, since decks like Stax and TnT were showing up in our environment. So we started making up more names, using the word Mud; things like Muddy this and Muddy that. Can you believe it still took about three more days before I e-mailed Koen with this message?

First let's get back to the process of creating Mud, about five months earlier.

The cards from the two decks that were not reviewed in the list above were melded into one deck. I'll wait before going through these cards, since I don't want to have to do it all again when I explain Mud in general later on.

Basically, we took the lock from Koen's deck, the Kill method from my deck, and combined the good disruption, utility, and mana sources from both decks.

I won't give any all-artifact-and-land decklists from that time, since they would be plain useless and take up far too much space. We tested so many cards, though, in versions of Mud with almost all other cards Mud usually plays... So it's more interesting to just give a description of each of the cards tested, as I'll do later on.

I will, however, review some color splashes below, which is more interesting than giving any individual card reviews.

Some descriptions about versions tested:

• We were testing a version which still featured Thran Dynamo, along with Mishra's Helix and Null Brooch maindeck. This, however, was at least one turn slower than actual Mud. It would get you in a lock, but slower.
• A white splash was considered, but rejected. This could feature Balance and Enlightened Tutor. We didn't find any real attractive cards in blue either - at least nothing more than Ancestral Recall and Tinker.
• Koen was testing a version with black. This included Nether Voids, Dark Rituals, plus Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor. It was quite strong, but it didn't seem as good as Mono-brown Mud or Mud splashing red for Goblin Welder.
• The other version we were testing at that time was actually the first WelderMud. It seemed like a strong option, but I need to tell something about the metagame to explain why this deck seemed inferior to Mud.

At that time our experience was that that the metagame existed of the following:

• Keeper or ComboKeeper
• Sligh - not yet Goblin Sligh or Ankh Sligh, just Sligh with some critters and a lot of direct damage sources
• Suicide black
• Void (mono-black or black/green)
• Blue-based control
• Reanimator
• Some combo, like PandeBurst or Academy
• Some Stompy
• Some Gro

First of all, it wasn't really necessary to play the Goblin Welders. The fact is that when you play Goblin Welder, you should probably play at least six extra"dead" cards that produce only red mana, like Mountains or Fire Diamonds. This makes you play at least ten artifacts or lands with useful second abilities - which is less you would play in a mono-brown version. Or maybe you can play red mana producing lands not being Mountains, thus with nice abilities, but we haven't found ones yet that outweigh the colorless lands in Mud at this time.

Second of all, at that time there wasn't really any artifact hate, which makes Goblin Welder better. Keeper could use Cunning Wish for a Shattering Pulse, and a Pernicious Deed destroys everything, including Goblin Welder. But there was a lot of creature hate. Keeper and Gro played Swords to Plowshares, Sligh played a lot of direct damage, Suicide black played Contagion a lot of the time, and combo could play Fire / Ice. Along with the fact that Goblin Welder was just easy to destroy then, it was just not necessary to sacrifice that many cards in the deck for to play it.

Against Blue-based Control, Welder is really good because it gets back countered spells... But certainly no powered Blue-based Control was played, and with the proper sideboard Blue-based control wasn't much of a problem. Against Pernicious Deed, Goblin Welder could be useful, it being a cheap way to get back destroyed artifacts. Also, it comes into play easier under Nether Void and it allows you to Weld expensive artifacts back in with Welder in play. However, there was more mono-black Void, mostly without Pernicious Deed - actually, I was the only player playing Black/Green Void.

Third of all - and most importantly - an argument to include Goblin Welder would have been if there were a lot of artifact decks. In an artifact mirror match, you usually need Welder. But there were just almost no artifact decks at the time, so actually mono-brown Mud seemed the better option.

Mud's General Goal
When reading through the cards, most of the things about Mud and how it works become clear, along with the good card combinations within Mud.

The basic idea is to disrupt the opponent while laying down a lock. Not all games have to go like this, but it gives you an idea of how Mud works.

Everything you do, you'll do while abusing the artifact mana sources and Mishra's Workshop in the best way.

Winter Orb, Tangle Wire and Powder Keg disrupt the opponent, while the last one along with Ensnaring Bridge also keep you alive when laying down the lock. Smokestack and one or two Spheres of Resistance form the lock. Grafted Skullcap helps you to retain this lock. (Sometimes, Grafted Skullcap and Ensnaring Bridge form a game-winning lock on its own if your opponent can't deal with it.)

Smokestack alone also does the job from time to time, but that's not preferred. This because you have no idea how the opponent will build up its own board in no time, with no Sphere of Resistance in play. It remains Type 1, so expect the worst.

Karn forms the kill method, and Metalworkers are also able to kill or help doing so. Karn can be played at any time; before playing disruption, after playing some disruption, or after you've laid down the lock. Karn is usually at his best with a few artifacts in play already to use its activated ability the turn it comes into play, and/or attack for a lot the next turn. When Karn is played before the lock is finalized, Mud can even kill in a fast aggressive aggro-like way.

An interesting theory about Mud gaining card advantage was pointed out to me by Stephen Menendian and Justin Walters, known as Smmenen and Saucemaster on forums as The Mana Drain, and this theory of Justin's is very well worth mentioning. Below is this theory, consisting of some of his words quoted, and some supplements by me. When talking about Grafted Skullcap, Temporal Aperture and Memory Jar, I said things like"this card causes card advantage on its own" and"this card causes direct card advantage." Now this theory is the reason why.

When talking about card advantage, people tend to think in terms of card drawing - or, as in Temporal Aperture's case, forms of card drawing. While this would be reason number one for gaining card advantage, Mud creates and follows a second form.

I quote:

"Most card advantage engines are draw engines, which in effect speed the game up - the person drawing the cards generates multiple turns worth of cards in one turn, usually at the cost of tempo. What Mud does is the converse: it slows the game down, making sure that it has the chance to use each card it draws while giving the opponent multiple dead draws. Same effect, different means. It's also worth noting that Mud almost never sacrifices any tempo to do this; in fact, its primary (non-Skullcap) method of generating card advantage is entirely tempo-based, which is why Smokestack, Skullcap, and now Chalice of the Void are such huge spells for Mud - they seal your tempo advantage, which generates card advantage, and make it permanent."

So more simplistically, Mud uses all of its spells to prevent the opponent from playing or using his spells; thus, the deck creates card advantage. Of course this theory takes place in an optimal case; it doesn't always happen, and not in every matchup. And of course, not all of Mud's spells get played; some draws in the Mud player's hand can be dead as well, but still the deck gains card advantage to a certain point.

So card advantage plays a big role in Mud - in fact, Mud always has won and always will win because of that.

Mud's Decklist
4 Smokestack
4 Sphere of Resistance
4 Tangle Wire
4 Powder Keg
4 Grafted Skullcap
3 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Winter Orb
1 Memory Jar
3 Karn, Silver Golem
4 Metalworker
1 Black Lotus
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Vault
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
4 Mishra's Workshop
4 City of Traitors
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Wasteland
3 Petrified Field
1 Strip Mine

Total: 60

The only changes since last year in September were the following:

• In the original deck, we played Grim Monolith. This proved to be a useless card; it wasn't bad, but it wasn't good, either. We used the Monolith instead of - believe it or not - one Sphere of Resistance. It seemed like too much of a pain for playing four Spheres they also disrupt you, but it didn't take long for them to prove themselves.
• Then we played four Ensnaring Bridges and three Powder Keg. Throughout the time Koen and me used to play one of these cards four times, the other three times, depending on the metagame. In the current metagame, Powder Keg is probably somewhat better, since there are more and more decks that don't depend on creatures.

The only thing really changed throughout the time is the sideboard.

In some environments nowadays, it's smart to maindeck up to four Jester's Caps and two Null Brooches, which are otherwise always sideboard cards. In the case of maindecking them, you probably should remove the three Ensnaring Bridges and some Powder Kegs or Winter Orbs. Winter Orb really doesn't do much against fast Combo; Jester's Cap does.

The rest of the sideboard will be discussed later.